Campbell's Cuts

Despite a message from the league that a guaranteed-revenue system would lower ticket costs, it didn't and never will happen. “With the right economic system, we can take the pressure off of ticket prices and I believe with the right economic system, many, if not most of our teams, will actually lower ticket prices.

The Sens chose to fire their coach 48 games into his tenure, even though their problems come from above. When Pat Quinn was the coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs – seems like a long time ago, doesn’t it? – one of the things he banged the drum about every time a coach got fired was the need for a coaches’ union.

Will the NHL and NBC split?... Next outdoor game in Boston?... Kovy brings Ovie and Malkin together?... and Canadiens legends. MONTREAL – The free lunch for NBC is over. That’s the message the NHL will give to the network when it begins negotiating a new national television contract to replace the one that expires after this season.

Even in the fading light of a young man's death, people inside the game refuse to accept the time has come to examine fighting's place. Bob Probert is the patron saint of all enforcers and Andre Roy is one of the toughest players in the NHL. The fact they have come out in favor of the Ontario League’s new helmet rule in the wake of the Don Sanderson tragedy should tell people something about what a positive move it was for the OHL to make.

Selke-winner Rod Brind'Amour and defensive liability Marc Savard sit at polar opposites of the plus-minus stat, but who's on the top and bottom and why? When you look at the plus-minus rankings this season, there are some shocking names at both ends of the list.
At the top is Marc Savard of the Boston Bruins at plus-29.

With Don Sanderson losing his life after hitting is head on the ice, hockey must look at the place fighting has in the game. Go ahead, accuse me of opportunism in the face of tragedy. I don't care much. What I do care about is that a 21-year-old man has had his life snuffed out because of a meaningless hockey fight and there is so, so much wrong with that.

The former Rocket Richard Trophy winner is on pace for a mere 24 goals, which begs the question: what to do with Kovie? After watching Ilya Kovalchuk fail to score a goal in his ninth straight game Tuesday night, Atlanta Thrashers coach John Anderson finally acknowledged the obvious.

If at the end of his career Sidney Crosby is to be considered among the all-time best to ever play hockey, he needs to score more often. Since Rocket Richard did it for the first time ever in 1944-45, there have been 184 total 50-goal seasons posted by 87 different players. It has been done by the truly great (Gretzky, Wayne; Lemieux, Mario), by the merely very good (Nieuwendyk, Joe; Roberts, Gary) and by the downright obscure (Richard, Jacques; Chouinard, Guy).

A 21-year-old Major League Hockey player is in a coma as a result of a fight, but will the hockey community take notice? It was a hockey fight that started the way thousands of others have over the years, but it ended with a 21-year-old fighting for his life in a Hamilton hospital.

The hockey community has shown over and over in the past it is willing to forgive and forget and Sean Avery should get the same courtesy. For those of you who think Sean Avery should, and will, be forever banished from the NHL landscape, I recall an exchange that took place in a dressing room at the Ivor Wynne Stadium in Hamilton during the lockout.

With an abundance of talent at the pivot position, Team Canada is going to be forced to make some tough decisions. It’s kind of funny – not ha ha funny, but strange funny – to think less than a decade ago, there was all sorts of hand-wringing and a deep-thinker summit to explore the reasons why Canada was not producing enough skilled hockey players.

The CBA was struck while the Canadian dollar was less than 80 cents against the greenback, so it's hard for them to complain now that it's back down. It was truly heartwarming to see Montreal Canadiens president Pierre Boivin come to the aid of Canadian team owners last week. But you have to wonder what his end game was when he carped about the sagging Canadian dollar.